


On The Care and Feeding of Chamaeleo Calyptratus

by Pippin4242



Category: Eyeshield 21
Genre: Asexual Character, M/M, Sex-Repulsed Character, a little bit of kissing, idiot yankee shenanigans, maybe hand-holding to come, this is not bebop highschool it's 2002 dammit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-02-14 12:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13007670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pippin4242/pseuds/Pippin4242
Summary: Rui's a genuine badass, of course, but it's hard to live up to his reputation when he's being ordered around by an (attractive?) bottle-blonde dickhead. Fuck this, fuck all of this.Commission for Grimcognito, who it's been fantastic to work with and who has wonderful ideas. :)





	1. Fuck Fashion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grimcognito](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimcognito/gifts).



“Tell me again,” demanded Hiruma, “whether the look is ironic or not. Because I'm starting to think even _you_ don't actually know.”

The long-legged quarterback was draped over a sofa, upside-down, his ankles crossed and feet pointing over the back of the soggy, discarded furniture. Rui could hardly take him in at the best of times, and, as so often seemed to be the case these days, this wasn't one of those. He was hard to look at, that was what it was. The Deimon captain was a flash of ball lightning in his dreary, colourless world – seeing him made Rui's eyes sting. It was always damn hard to look straight at him, and no matter how clearly that tongue of his picked its way around his fiendish teeth, somehow Rui couldn't always make out the words – the wind seemed to rush in his ears, until he could barely hear himself think.

“Gonna catch you out some time~” Hiruma continued, halfway into doing that annoying crowing voice he used sometimes, but still somehow sounding bored. He blew a bubble of pink gum, and went back to typing.

Rui squatted, trying to measure up what Hiruma was doing – to gauge the fakeness of this cool pose. He was right, he knew – there was no way Hiruma was relaxed; trying to type upside down on a laptop meant the machine kept slowly sliding forward onto his groin, and the son of a bitch kept quietly pushing it back up and pretending he wasn't.

He hadn't seen who'd left the sofa here – the alleyway down the side of the school had always seemed to attract fly-tippers. One time he'd scored a free TV, and he'd set it up in the disused AV clubroom (or, at least, he'd offhandedly suggested it be done, and his loyal teammates had set to it right away). Sure, the picture was kind of janky, and if anybody stood in between the smeary, cracked window and the flickering CRT screen it would cut out for some reason, but it was theirs.

The alleyway was a good place.

Snap back to reality. Rui felt his tongue sticking out in distaste. “What do you mean, the _look,_ ” he scowled.

“The _look_ , fuckin' lizard. It's 2002, and this ain't _Be-Bop High School_.”

The sofa was wet. He _knew_ the sofa was wet. He'd tried sitting on it when it had first appeared, and had instantly regretted it. It wouldn't have dried out in just a couple of weeks, and it had definitely rained again since then anyway.

How the _fuck_ was Hiruma making it look not just _comfortable_ but downright _badass_ to lie upside down on a wet sofa in an alleyway? Wasn't it soaking through his school uniform? Wasn't it _bothering_ him? Lying around in wet clothes – just the thought made Rui feel itchy.

“Ain't a look,” he muttered, knowing there was no answer that would let him seem cool.

“Yeah?” asked Hiruma quizzically. He left it _just long enough_ for it to be somehow completely obnoxious, before he blew another bubble in his gum and started chewing again, loudly. “If it ain't a look, what is it?” Rui could see the gum flash pink every time he spoke.

“It's just... clothes,” muttered Rui. “Good clothes to ride a bike in. Look, I bet there's stuff that people like to wear at your school, too.”

“Maybe,” said Hiruma in a detached tone, and took to his typing again.

“Like,” said Rui, desperate and feeling that he was losing a fight of some sort, “like your damn earrings. Don't think I ain't noticed your earrings.”

“There's no fad for piercings at Deimon,” yawned Hiruma, subtly pushing the laptop back onto his perpendicular legs. “I'm talking about dressing like bosozoku's still a fuckin' thing.”

Rui said nothing, convinced this was a trap.

“Because it ain't.”

“ _Shut up,_ ” hissed Rui.

“What's that? Can't hear you,” asked Hiruma, theatrically cupping an oversized ear.

“I said _shut up,_ Deimon,” Rui spat, in what he knew everybody else on the planet would have thought of as an extremely threatening tone. Hiruma just looked at him as if he were a kitten baring its teeth in useless, adorable rage. “You don't _know_ me. You come round here all the time and try and push me around in front of my men, and you think it's all so fucking _funny_ , and you don't know the first fucking thing about me!” For a moment Rui thought of pushing him off the sofa – it was a bad idea, of course, and he had no real intention of doing it, but the urge was there.

Hiruma acted so _untouchable_. But he was just this reedy, skinny player – barely quarterback material at all – and Rui knew, was so sure somewhere deep inside himself, that if he ever actually got to lay hands on the guy, he'd _wreck_ him. But it was like trying to punch a old monk in some old kung fu film or something (he didn't just watch bosozoku stuff, so _screw you_ Hiruma) – he had all this weakness right there on display, and he set it up just so, and it always looked like it'd be more trouble to you than to him if you actually hit him, even though you'd win at first. Suspended from the league probably, and then where would he be? It wasn't just the honour deal they had, or the threats he kept making about his bike.

Something about knowing that made the distance Rui kept feel like a tangible thing. As if there were three feet of perspex between them, or a wall of ice. It made him want to touch – not even in violence, just to reach out and touch him. This asshole, this upside down son of a bitch – he was real, and he was right there, and Rui couldn't touch him and it made him itch up and down and wish he was on his own so he could start playing with his knife – just, just cut up something useless, didn't matter what – sponges were a good one – he just wanted to break something, slash and stab it to bits, and not have anybody get weird about it.

“I know plenty about you,” murmured Hiruma, sounding artificially calm, staring at his laptop again. “You're a Habashira; one older brother, name of Tokage. Your father's an assemblyman and your mother –”

“That's not – that's _data_ ,” spat Rui. “You fucking cyborg.”

“I think you mean android,” smirked Hiruma.

“Goddammit, nobody asked you!” His impotent rage made his fists ball but it wasn't going to happen, so he breathed deeply and unclenched them again.

“Personal stuff, is it?” Hiruma grinned toothily and made actual eye contact for a change. He was wearing makeup; it didn't fool Rui. “You get good grades in Japanese, kind of down the middle with everything else. You'd think you'd be good at PE but your teacher says you _'lack the will to follow through._ ” Another bubble. Rui was reasonably sure that he hated this man.

Anyway he _didn't_ lack the will to follow through. Rui knew damn well he'd been a good leader so far – his team needed him, and they respected him, and he knew they had a good shot at the Christmas Bowl, just like his brother had tried before him.

“I mean, I could get _more_ personal~” crowed Hiruma, “but then you start getting into _opinions_ , right? Fact is, I know you, Rui. Maybe I know you better than you know yourself.” He snapped the laptop shut and swung his body around into an upright seated position, and then seemed to be making way too much eye contact.

“What's that supposed to mean,” muttered Rui, but his heart wasn't in it. It was all he could do not to look away.

“Means I know you want this,” leered Hiruma, producing a plastic shopping bag, apparently out of nowhere.

“Wh- well, what even is it?” asked Rui, taken aback. Every time he thought he had the measure of Hiruma, the guy just got weirder.

“Lunch, slave.” He briefly flashed a couple of store-bought bentos at him – they looked like the fancy brand, which had the kara age he particularly liked. “Drive me to your parents' place so you can heat the damn things up. Grab your bike! Ke ke ke~”

Fuck's sake.


	2. Fuck Scenesters

Owning a motorbike was a personal thing. A big commitment. A lot of guys named their bikes; Rui had considered it, but maybe the moment had passed. It was a heavy responsibility, coming up with a lifelong moniker for something so big, so expensive, so important. He had no idea how anybody ever managed get it together enough to name a child. She – _it_ – the bike – was a Kawasaki Zephyr 400, and _it_ was exactly what it needed to be. No more and no less.

He wasn't a bike weirdo. The Zephyr wasn't the wind beneath his wings, or like riding lightning, or any shit like that. It was a motorbike. A really, really good motorbike. It'd just needed a few little tweaks here and there, and now it was fucking _perfect_ for him. More than anything else, it got him places and meant he didn't have to take the train, and it felt great, and it looked really cool when his coat flapped in the wind.

Rui loved being on it so fucking much. It felt so _right_. In fact, it felt _so_ right, that even though he definitely, 100% wasn't a bike weirdo, it felt kind of _insulting_ whenever he had anyone ride pillion. Like, why would you weigh it down like that? Why would you let someone else sit all over it, unless they really had to? Them and their greasy damn hands.

So it was kind of strange how it never felt that bad when Hiruma demanded that Rui drop him off somewhere. The rest of the jobs bothered him, but not the bike stuff. And when he didn't text for a while, Rui kind of missed it.

The Deimon quarterback, in all his shitty short-armed glory, had to be pressed right up against him for safety as they rode. The laptop and bentos had been stuffed into his messenger bag: it was just Hiruma's chest Rui could feel against his back and through his coat, hotter than it had any right to be through layers of clothing. His mind drifted unusually as he zipped through the complacent urban traffic – if he could feel Hiruma so clearly, could Hiruma feel him? That uniform shirt looked cheap and thin, after all, like all real school uniforms – incidentally, _fuck_ wearing a school uniform.

Hiruma was silent, which _never_ happened. It was kind of scary, and it made Rui feel hyper-aware of his presence, afraid on some level that he'd hurt him, or that the guy had come off, and very much focused on making sure they were still pressed up against one another like that, at all times.

From time to time, Rui could feel his breath against his ear.

It... was kind of nice? But incredibly distracting. In fact, it seemed as though the drive back to his parents' place was over in a flash, which found him stumbling, stiff-legged, to the side gate where he always brought the Zephyr in when he bothered to come home. Rui realised he hadn't thought much about how it would feel to bring Hiruma here, to this place where he was barely comfortable himself. He snuck a glance.

Hiruma looked just as relaxed as he did everywhere. His hair, as always, stuck up every which way, but somehow evenly enough to look _ornamental_ , kind of visual kei I-don't-care cool. He was staring up towards the mess of telegraph wires which served the street in a laid back pose that would have looked gormless on anybody else; Rui watched as he blew and popped yet another compulsive pink bubble.

Whatever. It was probably all fake bravado anyway. That's how everybody got through life, right?

“Let's get inside and get this over with,” Rui muttered, scrabbling with the key and failing to unlock the door on his first attempt. The thought occurred to him that the neighbours might think this was a date, since they were clearly from different schools – then he wondered why his mind had gone there straight away, and he tried desperately to clear his mind as he felt a red-hot blush coming on. Mortifying.

Hiruma was suddenly right behind his ear. It was all he could do not to make a prey noise of fright.

“Havin' trouble with the lock, _shitachi_?”

…'Cute little tongue'? What was that all about?

Rui was so irritated as he finally managed to fumble the door open that it didn't register until some minutes later that Hiruma seemed to have dropped the 'fucking.' Well, it was about time.

He didn't know why he felt so anxious about what Hiruma thought of his parents' place. He hardly spent any time here as it was – even Hiruma knew that – and it's not like he chose the colour of the walls, or the furniture, or – Rui found himself moving quickly to put away the soy sauce, still out from breakfast, which he actually had bothered with this morning, and then cursed himself again. Like Hiruma gave a shit if he left the soy sauce out. Fuck this place. Why were they even here?

“Gimme the damn bento, asshole,” he scowled, and, pulling the bag from Hiruma's hands, unceremoniously stuffed one into the microwave.

Why were they doing this? Why couldn't they have found somewhere at the school? There was probably a microwave somewhere that someone wasn't using. And if Hiruma had wanted a hot bento, why hadn't he just asked the guy at the konbini to heat it up for him at the first place? He hated being at his parents' place at the best of times. And now fucking _Hiruma_ was here.

Rui felt kind of like he was missing something. But hell if he knew what.

Urgh. He tried to conceal a shiver at the discomfort of it all.

Fuck this.


	3. Fuck Fucking

Rui was just _stood_ there, all slouched with his hands by his sides, watching the bento slowly rotate in the microwave. Neither of them seemed to have anything to say. The ticking of the clock was loud enough to make Hiruma angry.

This was fucking _frustrating_. It was too _slow_ and neither of them were saying what they were _thinking_ and it was a waste of both their time. Hiruma decided the only way to make Rui actually do anything was going to be to grab his attention forcibly.

“So,” he said, blowing a bubble as punctuation, “we gonna kiss or what?”

Rui's back stiffened. “What the fuck's that supposed to mean,” he muttered, in a hostile grumble.

Nah, not gonna happen. Not gonna let him drag it out like that.

“Oi greaser,” Hiruma exclaimed, and swung into action to pull off a full kabedon wall slam. He swiftly turned Rui by one shoulder, pushed him gently against the wall and loomed at him dramatically, hands on either side of his head. He grinned and moved right in as though to kiss or to lick Rui's jaw.

Habashira Rui, noticed by everyone who knew anything about the game for his gigantic hands and grip of iron, _dropped the soy sauce._ Just... fumbled it. It achieved half a rotation in the air before Hiruma managed to snatch it up. Several drops flew out and splattered harmlessly against the tiled kitchen floor.

He looked up at Rui quizically, still trying to gauge the situation. Hiruma was no fool – he was clever enough to _know_ he was clever. He rarely misread situations this badly, and he'd already decided not to take it personally – he'd made some kind of mistake; this wasn't necessarily out and out rejection. No matter how much it fucking sucked.

“So... no kiss?”

Rui said nothing; he just stared angrily at the floor.

Hiruma passed Rui the soy sauce – he had no idea where it was usually kept, after all. Rui's hand closed properly around it but he still said nothing.

“This is... not a me thing, right?” Hiruma asked, as neutrally as he could manage. “This is... maybe more a kissing thing?”

“Nnnnnn,” said Rui, noncomittally. The microwave beeped loudly to let them know it had finished. Rui gratefully sprang away from Hiruma and put the other bento in to warm.

Hiruma pulled the cover off of the first one. The smell of hot chicken and rice filled the kitchen. It seemed to him that perhaps meals here were usually a bit more organised than this. But fuck it, he loved konbini food. The decent variety of meat and veg you could get in a premade bento pretty much sustained him at this point – he couldn't remember when he'd last seen his own dad. A quick glance around what he could see of the house had already told him a lot of what he'd wanted to know – there wasn't much here that could belong to Rui, either. No normal teenage boy stuff. He couldn't see his football gear, or any big enough shoes, or a games console or any of the stuff you might expect. They were alike. He'd known it.

Rui was watching the second bento as it slowly rotated. Hiruma, on a hunch, managed to find the right drawer and purloin a set of chopsticks.

Finally, Rui spoke.

“Why'd you buy two?”

“So I could come over and heat it up, clothes horse,” Hiruma replied, flippantly.

“Nah.”

“Nah?”

“Nah. 'Cos you got this at the Happy Mart, and they heat 'em up for you.”

“Hn. Didn't say I could only heat it up here, just that I got it with eating it here in mind.” Hiruma hoisted himself onto the worktop, and set about his bento with gusto.

“Why?” asked Rui, tersely.

“So you'd eat one too, _beroringa_.” He had no idea whether Rui played Pokemon, but it made him happy.

Rui's shoulders sagged. The microwave beeped again. He took his bento, apparently impervious to the hot packaging, seized a pair of chopsticks, and subsequently Hiruma's gaze, with a powerful glare.

“Get the _fuck_ off my parents' worktop. That's not where you fucking sit to eat.”

Hiruma tried not to show his delight immediately. The fire was always there, deep down – he loved that about Rui. He loved the guy's eyeliner too, and the way it made his eyes smoulder as he glared up at him. He hopped down and followed him obediently to the sofa – a nice dry sofa, he fervently hoped – and they started to eat together in companionable silence. Rui flicked through channels on the TV for a while as he munched on the kara age.

Hiruma was pretty sure the Habashiras never sat here to eat normally. But it was fucking nice. And a hell of a lot nicer than having a guy at your beck and call but never seeing him eat a decent hot meal.

He shuffled a little closer to him on the sofa. Just enough to feel his warmth again.

Rui, without taking his eyes off the gameshow repeat he'd settled on, slowly leaned against Hiruma. The strength of his well-honed muscles was apparent even through all his clothes, as he stayed stiffly sat for a good minute or so. Then, with glacial slowness, he began to relax, his head against Hiruma's shoulder.

“Hey grease monkey,” Hiruma tried, once he was pretty sure Rui wasn't going to snap back into tension.

He didn't move – this was good.

“What,” said Rui flatly, through a mouthful of rice.

“Sorry about the kiss. Didn't know you didn't go in for that.”

Rui stared fixedly at the TV, and swallowed his food. “Don't mind kissing. Don't like getting thrown around.”

Interesting information which Hiruma could definitely use at a later date.

...Fuck it, time's an illusion anyway.

He carefully craned his neck to kiss Rui's forehead. Hiruma could see the light of the TV illuminating Rui's huge eyes, as he made no attempt to move away.

“Don't mind that kind of thing?” he asked of him.

“Don't mind it, no,” replied Rui, maintaining a flat expression. “Don't want you fucking pinning me again though. You watch too many fucking high school dramas.”

Hiruma stashed his empty bento packaging on the side table, and pressed his face gently against Rui's.

“Don't mind this kind of thing?”

“Don't mind this either. It's not a sliding scale though. You can't just do whatever. I've got a limit.”

Better to ask: better to know.

“Because of... me, or because of you?”

“Because of me,” said Rui, in a faintly hollow voice.

“Does it stop at... oh, let's say... fairly intense kissing?” asked Hiruma, trying not to inflect everything with the weight Rui seemed to be bringing to their interactions.

“...'bout there, yeah,” he replied, sullenly.

“Good thing you're _my_ slave, and not anybody else's, isn't it?” smirked Hiruma, sliding his tongue into Rui's mouth. He pulled him up and close with a hand on his unresisting jaw. Their lips met. It was sweet, and didn't last for long. There were probably still traces of Rui's lunch between those flat teeth, Hiruma knew, but he couldn't taste it and didn't mind.

That was why he'd picked two of the same bento set, after all.

Hiruma pulled away for a moment. “Because you never fucking speak up, dumbass. Just 'cos you gotta follow my orders, doesn't mean you don't have any control over _this_. I'm your boss, not a fuckin' tyrant.”

Rui initiated the second kiss, and that alone made it good. His tongue very carefully probed into Hiruma's mouth; squishy, and a little adhesive. He was tentative and it was fucking cute enough to make Hiruma want to throw him down, which he knew better than to try now. Hiruma ran his long fingertips up Rui's back, and made him shudder, which felt amazing mid-kiss. It made the blood run to his head and, he noted to himself, also to his crotch. Seemed like he wouldn't be taking any action on that, at least not in company.

Getting all the relevant data felt fucking _fantastic_.

He stroked Rui's hair, and ran his tongue over his teeth.

Fuck not telling people stuff. Fuck that.


	4. Fuck Hiding

_“Sena-kun,”_ hissed Monta.

“Yeah?” asked Sena, not really listening.

_“Sena-kun!”_ squeaked Monta, urgently.

“Eeeh? Sorry, Monta-kun, it's so early,” yawned Sena, his feet pounding the damp track as he ran. Sena didn't really have to think about training any more. It had become totally automatic – he wasn't outright enthusiastic, like Kurita, who he'd once or twice caught out here _in the actual dark, in the middle of the actual night_ , but he could see the good it had been doing him, and, more importantly, his game, and he didn't really mind any more when Hiruma would start sending him death threats by way of getting him down to the field of a morning.

(Actually, he did kind of mind, because he couldn't help but feel his parents were going to get the wrong idea if they ever found out. But with Hiruma, it was much easier to pretend you didn't mind, because minding never seemed to change anything. After all, hadn't he signed up to this team as the manager? What had ever happened to that?)

“Sena-kun!” blurted Monta, and began to shake him by the shoulders without slowing their running speed, an impressive feat of early morning coordination if ever Sena had been awake enough to comprehend one.

“Y-yes! Sorry, Monta-kun!” peeped Sena, somewhat overcome by his teammate's energy. “What is it?”

“LOOK AT WHAT HIRUMA-SAN IS DOING,” Monta shrieked, in an attempt at a whisper. Sena followed his pointing, outraged finger, to see their captain perched precariously atop the freestanding brick wall to which the outdoor sinks were attached.

It was hard for Sena to see what Hiruma was doing at all, let alone to make any kind of judgement. He was craning over something – someone – spider-like, all elbows and sundry corners. But fortuitously, the track was bringing them closer to the sight which had so alarmed Monta by the second. There was a second person – white coat flapping in the breeze – and Hiruma was staring down into his face, their noses close to touching.

It was a moment out of any high-end shoujo anime, Sena felt with misplaced conviction. He half-expected a sudden flurry of snow to sweep artistically by from left to right, though it wasn't even the right season for that.

“ _Monta-kun oh my god is that what I think it is oh my god is that Hiruma-san kissing Habashira-san,_ ” Sena hissed. His eyesight was fine – really quite good, even – but he lacked the predatory razor focus of Monta, who'd trained half his short life to be a catcher.

“No!” panted Monta, worn out by his outrage. “It's WORSE. Look closer! Look at his hands, Sena-kun, look!”

Sena looked.

Hiruma's hands were up to Rui's face. A... fight? No, their postures were all wrong for that. He was doing something careful, intricate. Seeing that it wasn't a kiss somehow wasn't decreasing the intimacy of the moment, or the urgency in Hiruma's movement.

“ _HE'S PUTTING MAKE-UP ON HIM, SENA-KUN,_ ” thundered Monta, apparently unable to take this any more.

“Oh,” replied Sena, unsure of what the ettiquette was at a moment like this.

“What do you mean, oh?” glared Monta, as they approached the two quarterbacks.

“I mean, um... oh, I guess,” said Sena, weakly.

Hiruma's deft movements were clearer now; it was eyeliner, if Sena was getting his make-up words right, and Habashira didn't look particularly displeased about having somebody apply it for him. Sena hadn't known Habashira wore make-up, but thinking about it, it should have been obvious. It should have been obvious that Hiruma wore it, too. Was he missing other obvious things like that? It was disconcerting to think he was even more oblivious than he'd suspected.

Sena knew he wasn't always the sharpest egg in the box, but nobody had pointy eyelashes without artificial aids, did they now.

They were really, really close to Hiruma and Habashira at this point. Sena ducked his head and tried to avoid Hiruma's line of sight, but he could feel those piercing eyes accusing him of something as he ran past them.

“ _Monta-kuuuuun,_ ” he wailed in desperation, under his breath.

“ _I KNOW_ ,” called back Monta, in barely-muffled agony.

“ _Monta-kun this is really awkward_ ,” moaned Sena.

“ _Just keep moving,_ ” hissed Monta.

That was the first circuit.

It was still morning, after all, long before school was due to start. Monta and Sena had been the only two on the field before Hiruma and Habashira showed up. It wasn't like they could just pack up and leave, because Hiruma was bound to ask them deep and searching questions later if they tried it, and whatever it was he asked wouldn't be the actual question he was asking, and Sena was sure he would _never find out what answer he had actually given._

So they ran on in awkward silence, knowing with grim, creeping certainty, that sooner or later they would _make it back to Hiruma and Habashira_.

Sena closed his eyes as they drew closer once again. Running was instinctive, running was his nature... but that wasn't very clever, as the ground still might be uneven. Reluctantly, he opened them again, one at a time. There was still... somebody sat above the sinks. In fact, there were two people. Yep, it was still Hiruma and Habashira.

“ _Monta-kun,_ ” hissed Sena.

“ _I know,_ ” replied Monta.

“ _No, what are they doing?_ ” agonised Sena, who was beginning to have an idea of what, in fact, it was that they were doing.

“HOLDING HANDS,” blurted Monta, and fixed his eyes on the track in front of them both.

As they got closer, Sena tried to focus on the track too, but he couldn't help glancing up... and, though Habashira was staring fixedly into the middle distance, Hiruma was _looking directly back at him._

“Meep,” Sena emitted involuntarily, and put his hands up to cover his face from the sheer predatory threat he could feel. At the last possible moment, he peered out again between his fingers.

Hiruma was _smiling sweetly_.

Sena was petrified by this point, and Monta was visibly sweating far more than their light exertion would justify. “What are we going to do, what are we going to do,” Sena muttered, but Monta had no answers. They pounded on in grim silence, their feet slowly but surely eating up the long distance of the circuit once again, with the sense that their doom was dawning ever closer. Sena kept trying to spot the sinks from a long distance but the trees were getting in the way. He wanted to know what was going on, just so he could feel emotionally prepared before he passed Hiruma again. He'd gone from putting make-up on Habashira, which was unusual but... justifiable? In a fashionista, visual-kei kind of way? to an actual definite display of PDA in the three minutes and twenty seconds Sena knew very well it took for him and Monta to make it around the edge of the grounds at a light jog.

This was Hiruma. In a further three minutes and twenty seconds, any kind of escalation was possible.

He felt the axe hanging above him as they rounded the corner one more fateful time. His breathing was coming out all wrong. His feet hurt when they hit the ground. He knew his pacing was off. Monta looked pale and clammy and horrible. Any moment now he was going to be able to see the sinks again. He could hear his pulse as it seemed to echo through his hollow, dry throat. He was in DANGER and he wanted to run AWAY FROM IT but that was only going to make things _worse_.

Sena couldn't bear it. He closed his eyes, and let his legs work on instinct.

“Sena-kun...” he heard.

“Yeah?” he asked, and heard his voice quaver. The fear of it all ran through him, worse than any opposing line, and a shudder made his ankles twitch out of rhythm, and then the ground underneath him seemed to get in the way, and suddenly, with a nasty knock to the jaw, Sena was scudding across the field, slowed down mostly by the stopping power of his own face.

“Sena-kun!” cried Monta in alarm, and jogged back to him.

Sena opened his eyes to see Monta's big, goofy face looking earnestly down at him.

Over his shoulder he could see the sinks.

They were completely clear of any students, and Habashira's bike was gone, to boot.

Sena felt like crying.

“Are you okay?” asked Monta, urgently, helping him up to a sitting position.

“Yeah,” sniffed Sena, touching his grazed chin gingerly. “Hurts a bit but I'll be fine. It's just –” he shot Monta a desperate look. “Mamo-nee is going to think Hiruma-san hurt me!”

\---

“Still don't see why I gotta look good _before_ I train,” grumbled Rui.

“Look good, feel good, train good,” crowed Hiruma, pressing a rocket launcher into his back and forcing him into a jog.

“Nobody looks good in running kit,” Rui muttered, but he picked up the pace.

After all, he'd have to work hard to get a decent workout in and still get to school in time for lessons.


	5. Fuck Creepy Shit, You Know, The Kind That Just Makes You Feel Really Uncomfortable And You Don't Really Know Why

Spending time with Hiruma really _was_ like spending time with an anime character, when you came down to it. Like how he wouldn't sit normally, that's the kind of thing animators would add to look _cool and dynamic and edgy_ , and show they weren't just trying to eat up time whenever there was a slow dialogue scene. And there were his piercings, and how he never wore his uniform right. And he had that stupid bleached hair that would get most people actually kicked out of a respectable school, not that Zokugawa was particularly respectable, but a guy _knows_ these things.

The worst was all his guns and shit – Rui knew, despite his parents living in a pretty nice house, and the fact that there was always money around from his dad's job, that he was genuinely pretty badass by ordinary standards. Like, genuinely subculturey, as these things go. That he really did have a gang at his beck and call, and that, just because he was really into the fashion side of it didn't mean the gang were just for show. They were _hard_ and sometimes they _hurt people_. But guns? Fuck, man, guns! Rui had never even seen a gun before he met Hiruma! And the guy wasn't shy about flashing them around – like, he seemed to be being brazen with them on purpose, like he was even louder about his weapons than he was about anything else. And they seemed to all be real, and they all seemed to be loaded, and they were all... things which were for killing people. Like, Rui was kind of into his butterfly knife. It looked cool as fuck, and it was a really pleasing weight in his hand, and the _click_ of it felt amazing, but like... he'd never used it to cut up anything more interesting than his sponges, or occasionally damp sticks, old boxes – just, useless stuff.

It was kind of creepy. Gave him the shivers. And even though he'd started kinda getting to know him lately – even kissed the guy, or got kissed by him – it felt like the gun thing was yet another one of the barriers Hiruma put up which made it hard for Rui to get to know him. It was one thing to know the guy was fronting, but another to know what the front was covering for. Will the real Hiruma Youichi please stand up?

Rui shifted irritably on his mattress and used his toes to kick the little electric heater up a notch. He wasn't sure if anybody knew how much time he'd been spending at the clubhouse lately, but if his parents didn't care enough to try and find out where he was sleeping, the teachers sure as fuck wouldn't. His team probably had some idea, but catch them disrespecting him enough to even imply he performed basic functions like sleeping. Nah, he was fine here – it was peaceful, listening to the rain on the iron roof, even if it was a bit cold.

It drummed harder still as he listened, and he closed his eyes, breathing through his mouth to enjoy the sensation of the cold air. He could feel his pulse in his eyelids. Without opening his eyes, he reached over to his coat, took his knife from the pocket, and felt the weight of it, lifting it up and down in his open palm. He felt still in here. Right.

There was a sickening cold metal sound, like the breaking of a heart. Rui sat up and palmed his knife in his dominant hand as quickly as he could, but he wasn't quick enough, because on the concrete floor, a mess of elbows and fangs, was Hiruma, cackling like a corvid, grinning like a pumpkin.

“What the fuck,” snarled Rui, his heart racing in his chest. “What the FUCK.”

“Fuckin' respond to texts then,” replied Hiruma, unruffled. He stood up, discarded a wet coat, and brushed himself down, looking nothing like a person who'd just fallen five feet from a narrow window. Rui found himself actually checking to see that that had been his method of ingress. The awning window closest to Hiruma was definitely jammed open as far as it would go, and it was quite possible that Rui hadn't thought to latch it properly because WHO DID THAT TO A GUY WHO WAS IN BED.

“Hiruma,” said Rui, bristling. “What the _fuck_.”

Hiruma unlocked the door and walked out into the rain, whistling in obnoxious fake nonchalance. He returned seconds later with a messenger bag, which looked pretty full, and rustled slightly when he plonked it down.

“If you don't want me breakin' in,” he said, locking the door behind himself, “then _answer your fuckin' texts, lizard._ ”

Rui pulled a face in displeasure, but he knew he hadn't been answering his texts. Truth was, he'd actually bothered to go home today, feeling vaguely like he ought to make the effort, and it had gone... badly. Words had been exchanged. A plate had been broken.

He got up and closed the window properly.

Putting up a front though, making out that everything was okay? Two could play at that game.

“You're gonna fuss 'cos I didn't text back? Didn't have you down as a needy boyfriend, Hiruma.”

Ah _shit_. Now he'd gone and admitted Hiruma was his boyfriend.

Rui sat back down on his mattress in defeat. Hiruma came and stood quietly alongside him in apparent solidarity, and eventually placed a hand upon his shoulder. Its slight warmth sent a tingle through Rui.

“Sorry for your loss,” said Hiruma, his words drenched in sincerity.

“My –” Rui began, about to claim he hadn't fucked up, but Hiruma just shook his head sadly.

“This was a test of will, tree-climber, and you've just lost it at last. I mean, we both knew you were gonna lose, but the question was how soon? And you did okay, I guess. But now you've said it, so I guess we're gonna have to start dating.”

Hiruma flopped backwards from standing, the tips of his spiked hair brushing the wall at the last moment. The mattress bounced arthiritically. He turned to face Rui, looking as relaxed as ever.

“Face it, you _lost_.”

“Whatever,” grumbled Rui, and decided to take advantage of the moment. He lowered himself onto his shoulder, leaned in close, and kissed Hiruma, who seemed delighted by the attention, or possibly, considered Rui, with a smattering of pride, by Rui himself. Hiruma wrapped an arm around his waist and squeezed him without, y'know, pawing at him, or seeming like he was trying to get something. Which was particularly nice. Rui didn't want him to let go, but all too soon Hiruma was reaching down and scrabbling inside his messenger bag.

“Here, disaster area.” He threw a bag of pre-popped popcorn at Rui's head. “Had to hunt around for this, but I wasn't sure if you had a microwave in here.”

“Why the fuck have you brought me popcorn?” asked Rui, feeling tentatively like he was going to start to struggle to keep up again.

“Movie night. First date.” Hiruma threw a mangy-looking DVD case at Rui's head, and he barely deflected it, catching it before it could hit the mattress.

The cover was ludicrously garish. It was a poorly-rendered attempt at pop art, with a mixture of Japanese and Romaji text completely unintegrated into the design. “Nest of Devils... Ma-No-Su?” asked Rui cautiously.

“Manos: The Hands Of Fate,” grinned Hiruma. “A true classic.”

“I _very_ much fuckin' doubt that,” grouched Rui, but he pulled out the PS2 cable from the SCART and plugged the DVD player in. Hiruma raised an eyebrow. “It don't work for DVDs,” allowed Rui, darkly. Hiruma clearly had no intention of probing into the scandal which had plagued the team, and said nothing of it.

The film started off incredibly dully, and Rui found himself cuddling up against Hiruma in companionable silence while they made an impressive inroad into what had looked like an industrial quantity of popcorn. After about five minutes of poorly-edited driving footage Rui started to wonder what the hell was going on, but the film picked up as it cut to a couple of a similar age to Rui and his... boyfriend... kissing at length in their car. He found himself feeling awkward about the couple's closeness, but instead of pulling away immediately, he wondered what Hiruma would do, and found himself posessed of the desire to intensely nuzzle and gently kiss Hiruma's neck as they leaned upon one another. Hiruma smelled of recent sweat, of rain, and of mid-priced teenage deodorant, as well as a vague whiff of... hotel soap?

“What the fuck is this film,” he whispered sweetly into Hiruma's ear.

“The best fuckin' film, just you wait,” rumbled his boyfriend in a sexy sort of purr.

Rui was beginning to strongly question Hiruma's motivation, but he shuffled up just a little closer to him on the mattress anyway. His eyes closed, ignoring the terrible film, he liked to feel the warmth of his boyfriend through his sweatshirt – he wasn't the pyjamas type, but he could hardly get away with wearing his big swoopy coat to bed. He might have missed out on this, for one. As the boring movie family drove endlessly in circles around the desert, Rui closed his eyes and imagined the lines of Hiruma's body behind him, the story his heat told. His body, slender, and still definitely not a proper quarterback shape, but with harsh, defined little muscles, earned from long hours and tooth-clenched determination.

Rui nuzzled against Hiruma's collarbone, and reluctantly tried to engage with _the best fuckin' film_ again.

...They were _still_ looking for their fucking hotel.

“Hiruma...” he muttered weakly, and even though Hiruma said nothing, Rui was sure he could hear him, because when he glanced up he could see a face full of delighted fangs, and eyes fixed dead on the screen.

“Okay FINE. It'd just better not be a long one,” he said, mostly to himself.

The on-screen couple arrived at a weird little house attended by a sinister and very poorly-dubbed man in bulging trousers. As they debated whether to stay or not, and ordered the poor man to take the bags in and out and in and out of the car, Rui decided he didn't mind at all that Hiruma's fingers had slowly pressed themselves around his waist. They were long, and their pressure was immensely grounding.

Hiruma leaned in close to Rui's ear. His sharp teeth grazed Rui's flesh imperceptibly as he spoke into it in a low tone:

“That poor fuck Torgo's got his satyr legs on back to front.”

“What?” asked Rui, feeling his tongue loll briefly in confusion.

“He was meant to be a satyr. I know it ain't in the script, but they made him these big satyr legs, like – goat legs? And he was meant to wear them just so, with hooves, but he had 'em on backwards, and that's why he's staggering around like that.”

Rui found himself starting to laugh.

“You – you really do like this piece of shit film, don't you?”

“Hell, yeah. It's a fuckin' load of fun. I like watchin' it with people – good memories and that.”

“So like, for real, Deimon – is it meant to be this shitty?”

“I don't think they were going for high art, but nobody can possibly make a film this bad on _purpose_ , and that's the fun of it. Ain't much fun to laugh at Torgo, mind, dude died just after the film was made. And he's acting his little heart out, the poor fuck.”

Torgo staggered off the one-room set again, carrying several suitcases, his backwards legs pulsating with his every attempted step.

“Hiruma?”

“Yeah?”

“You know a decent bit about this film, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Why the fuck don't the motors make any noise in anything?”

Hiruma closed his eyes, recalling in bliss.

“The camera they rented could only do thirty-two seconds at a time. And it couldn't pick up _sound_.”

“You're fucking kidding me.”

“I would never speak a word of a lie to you,” Hiruma replied, in a saintly tone.

Rui smirked, but felt like he was getting the idea a bit better. They watched the complete disaster of a film together in peace for a while, until the horror element finally began to take hold.

It started with the little girl leading a Doberman into the shot.

“Those two are the only two who got paid for this movie,” Hiruma observed, taking another handful of popcorn. “She got a bike and the dog got a bag of food.”

And then she opened her mouth and something about the mistimed English words sounded so very wrong and _broken_ that it made Rui's skin crawl. He'd heard recordings before, the earliest recorded human voices, on a TV show once. They used to do it on wax cylinders, he remembered. And it sounded like shit. It sounded like ethereal screeching from the dawn of the universe.

And that's what seemed to be coming out of the little girl's mouth.

He suppressed a shudder. He was sure _nobody_ was usually scared when watching _Manos: The Hands of Fate_. He was only watching it to oblige his boyfriend. Who was probably only here to make sure he hadn't frozen to death in an alleyway somewhere. It was a stupid fucking film made by idiots half a century ago, and definitely not a path to a hellmouth or some shit.

Rui pressed himself against Hiruma, feeling the reassuring warmth behind him as Hiruma munched unconcernedly on the popcorn.

The faint sense of unease didn't really leave him after that. The family, trapped in a domestic, ordinary environment, the threat creeping in from nowhere in particular. The dog in the night (and moths hanging round the cameras, as Hiruma gleefully pointed out), and the constant implication that _nobody would come to save them_ as the freaky cult assholes tried to make them into people just like themselves...

Maybe it was just too close to home.

Hiruma seemed to sense that something was off, eventually. He stopped scarfing all the popcorn on his own and started to gently feed every second handful into Rui's willing mouth. Rui didn't really dislike being taken care of like that; Hiruma didn't make a song and dance out of it, and it meant he get fed, and he didn't really feel like leaning over and taking any for himself right now anyway.

Torgo _pawed_ at his master's wives, scantily clad and tied to stone pillars, while what sounded like shitty stock music droned on awkwardly. It was, it was fucking creepy, this film – probably for none of the reasons the idiots behind it had been going for, but it wasn't fucking _nice_.

The Master awoke, and began praying to a fucked-up looking statue.

“This film...” muttered Rui.

“Over pretty soon, and about half of the runtime's the wives fighting ineptly in the sand,” said Hiruma, softly.

“One of them things where the director just told 'em to be pretty?” asked Rui, the pendulum swinging back to 'amused.'

“Fuck man, I know that shit happens, but I don't think the director told them a fuckin' thing about what to do.”

It was true; one of the wives was supposed to be smacking the face of another down into the sand over and over, but it was clear that the second wife was doing all the work. Another slapped her opponent repeatedly, but only the second, third, fourth and fifth slaps made a sound, out of eight.

Rui laughed, and it set Hiruma off. He'd never heard Hiruma this relaxed and happy. If a few freaky fuckin' noises was all it took to get the bastard to unwind like this, hell, he'd take it. They laughed and they laughed, until Rui's sides hurt, and he had to carefully wipe tears from his eyes to avoid ruining his eyeliner.

“Look,” hissed Hiruma, treacherously.

“What?” asked Rui, off-balance.

“That fuckin' snake. They swiped that from a Disney documentary. That's why everyone else is on sand but the snake's on a fuckin' purple carpet!”

This was entirely too much for both of them, and they both laughed until they'd completely ruined their makeup, until Rui barely noticed the film ending, until they were curled up on the mattress in one another's arms, the TV still buzzing on the DVD menu, casting a half-light over the room.

…

It wasn't until much later that Rui would realise Hiruma must have planned this as a date _before_ admitting they were dating.


End file.
